An Experimental Research About Gratitude Intervention In Vocational College Students

As Positive psychology growing, psychologists will put more and more focus on people’s positive psychological quality, along with it gratitude will gain more attention. Gratitude is defined as a moral character, personality feature, emotional feature, cognitive and attribution. Although there is no unified definition of gratitude, but it was proved by scholars that it has close relationship with positive emotion, happiness, pro-social behaviour and mental health. So we should not only do the gratitude research in theory, but also apply theory in reality. It is of great practical significance that we apply the achievements of gratitude research in clinical, educational and social aspects, enhance individual grateful disposition through gratitude intervention, thus prevent and solve psychological problems. At the background of serious lack of gratitude among college students and the educational backwardness in China, this research will take the vocational college students on as the object to explore effects of different gratitude interventions by experiments, It aims to further enrich the gratitude research in education, put forward the gratitude education methods, and provide theoretical evidence for cultivation of students’ gratitude quality.The study included "gratitude video intervention study" and "gratitude video and counting blessing of common intervention study". In study one, we gave160vocational college students a test of gratitude questionnaire GQ-6, and selected38subjects with low level of gratitude, then divided them into two groups which were experimental group and control group, the experimental group was given gratitude video intervention, the control group was not given any treatment. Gratitude video intervention included4major subjects, that is be grateful to parents, society, teachers and beautiful natural environment. The subjects in experimental group were required to watch one subject of the gratitude video each week,30minutes one time and it last4weeks. The subjects in control group lived in normal life. After4weeks, the gratitude questionnaire GQ-6was retested by experimental group and the control group. The results showed that video intervention can enhance the students’ gratitude level. In study two, we gave206vocational college students a test of gratitude questionnaire GQ-6, and selected88subjects with low level of gratitude, then divided them into three groups which were experimental group1, experimental group2and control group, the experimental group1was given both gratitude and counting blessing intervention, experimental group2was given only gratitude video intervention, the control group was not given any experimental treatment. The students in experimental group1were asked to write down at least one thing he felt grateful to each day, including people, activities or objects, they were also required to watch one gratitude video once a week. The students in experimental group2were only asked to watch one gratitude video once a week. After4weeks of gratitude intervention, the students in the three groups were tested GQ-6again. The results of study two showed that:(1) Intervention of watching gratitude video and counting blessing together can improve gratitude level of vocational college students.(2) Intervention of watching gratitude can also improve gratitude level of vocational college students.(3) The effects brought by giving intervention of watching gratitude video and counting blessing together is not better than only giving the intervention of watching gratitude video.